Two years after settling a lawsuit about not properly paying employees for overtime work, the Colorado Department of Corrections is back in the courtroom over the same issue.
In November 2022, William Hastings filed a lawsuit against the Colorado Department of Corrections. As a criminal investigator in Florence, he claimed he wasn’t properly paid for overtime work.
In a 2020 lawsuit, Steve Ruiz and Adam Morehead said they were not paid for overtime work as parole officers. Like Hastings, the two claimed they sometimes worked 80 to 90-hour weeks but were only paid $2.00 an hour when they were on call. After two years of litigation, the lawsuit was settled for $5 million of taxpayer money. Right around the same time, Hastings filed his lawsuit with the same allegations.
The lawsuit comes at a time when the Department of Corrections vacancy and overtime numbers show a cycle of low staffing and high workload. At last check, there were 1,192 job vacancies throughout the prison system in Colorado and 468 open corrections officer job openings. That’s an increase of 585% since the summer of 2021.
The lawsuit says that to break the cycle of unemployment in the department, the state needs to start complying with federal employment laws.
